


The Mask

by arrowsong



Series: Ghosts That We Knew [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Criminal Minds, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 17:27:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4028530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arrowsong/pseuds/arrowsong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Bucky walks Charlie back to Spencer's place he starts to get to know the agent a little better, and her history with the BAU.  The more Bucky learns, the more he realizes that their lives aren't so different, as they try to live with the shadows of their pasts, resulting a rare glimpse at the girl behind the mask</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mask

Leaving the stuffy, dimly lit bar, Charlie took a deep inhalation of fresh air as she turned up the collar of her coat. Some point between their arrival and now the air turned cool and crisp.  The Indian summer was gone, and chilly autumn winds came in its stead.  It’s moments like these that made her question her decision to move up North – guarantee there would be no autumn chill down in New Orleans. 

Looking over next to him, Bucky noticed Charlie trying to hide her little shivers and the sudden quickening of her pace as they walked to the subways station.  “Here,” he shrugged out of his coat, passing it towards her, “take it.”

“No that’s alright,” she tried arguing, failing to assure him she was fine.

“Just take it,” he insisted, holding it open for her. “I don’t really need it – I burn kind of hot anyways,” he added after a second.  Thanks to their experiments on him, Hydra inadvertently adjusted Bucky’s core body temperature by a few degrees, so not only did he heal faster, but also it was next to impossible for him to feel the cold, or get sick. He’d have to be in Siberia in the buff during a snowstorm to really feel the chill.  “I’m not trying to make a pass at you – I promise,” he added for good measure.

“You really are superman, aren’t you?” she teased softly before deciding to take the coat.  “Thanks,” she added with a smile to show she hadn’t forgotten her manners, inadvertently melting his heart.

“Not a problem,” he grinned back enthusiastically at her, not failing to notice it was the third time she called him ‘superman’ that night.  “Must have been a lot warmer down South, huh?”

“Yeah,” she nodded, pushing up the baggy sleeves of his coat over her arms so at least her hands stuck out. “Swore I was going to freeze to death my first winter up here,” she added with a nervous laugh.

“How long have you been in the city?”

“I came to DC when I was . . . oh God, how old was I now,” she paused to think.  It was all a lifetime ago now; she had difficulty remembering. “I think I was seventeen, no, sixteen. I was sixteen when I moved to DC.”

“What brought you here?”

“Wanted a change of scenery,” she forced a smile in his direction.  

Sensing her apprehension, Bucky dropped the subject immediately, telling her she didn’t have to say anything if she didn’t want to.  He was desperate to see the girl in the bar again, the one laughing and smiling, offering him cheeky remarks, who set his pulse racing for the first time in years.

That girl left the moment Doreah showed up, but Bucky hoped, perhaps naively, that he could get her to come back – even for just a minute. “You and your team . . . you seem close,” he awkwardly commented instead, balling his fists into his jeans, careful not to get the denim caught between the plates of his left arm.

“Yeah, we are,” she agreed, the warmth returning to her smile. “They’re family. Might not seem like much, but they’re mine” she added.  _And they’re all I have._

“So what made you decide to join the FBI? Did you always want to join or did that come up after. . .” he stopped suddenly, realizing he was bringing up her dad again.

“James, it’s okay,” she assured him she took no offense to him mentioning her father, wasn’t like he was some kind of dirty little secret – she just didn’t like reporters asking her questions about him, or having him come up in their drinking game. 

“It’s not exactly as if I could take over my daddy’s auto shop after his arrest,” she added playfully.  The people of Scottsborough practically revolted after her father’s sick little hobby was discovered; they all but burned down the family farm following his conviction. Last she heard, the old auto shop was still there, left abandoned – everyone was too afraid of the bad energy that hung around the place to do something with it.  So it sat there, the exact same way her dad left it the day he was arrested, as did the house she grew up in – but she didn’t want to think about that.

“When the first few bodies washed up against the river banks, and sheriff Cooper realized the case was serial, he called the BAU. The agents they sent down treated me real good like after they arrested my dad. Kept in touch, didn’t treat me like I was filth just because of what he did, and I just figured you know what, if that’s what the FBI was about – then maybe it was a place I wanted to be.”

“You still keep in touch with the agents?” Bucky wondered.  It had to be a strange feeling, being friendly with the men who arrested your father. Did she secretly resent them for arresting her father? Did she hate her father?  He couldn’t tell. She spoke about it all with such a blasé, these are the facts attitude, and it was near impossible to determine how she felt about it all.  Though, he had the distinct feeling that was exactly how she wanted it.

“Yeah,” Charlie nodded with a secretive smile dancing impishly behind her pale eyes.  “Every year I always get Christmas and birthday cards from one. The other insists on calling me kitten, and we have dinner together every Sunday night.”

It took Bucky a second, but eventually he recalled Charlie’s parting conversation with her colleague Dave – _‘I’ll see you tomorrow night at your place for dinner?’  ‘See you then, kitten.’_

“You mean Dave?” Bucky asked, wide eyed in disbelief. 

“Yep,” she nodded slightly. “Rossi and I go way, way back. He’s actually the one who got me into the BAU.”

“You weren’t always BAU?” He had no idea the way the Bureau worked.  Charlie seemed so comfortable, and at home with her team, he kind of just assumed they had always worked together; he was intrigued to learn that was not always the case. 

“No – I’ve only been with them for the last six or seven years.”

“What did you do before the BAU?”

“Worked mostly in undercover. I had contacts out of the bureau they wanted to capitalize on, and I’m good at thinking on my feet,” she admitted with a shrug.

“What happened?” He got the distinct feeling she didn’t just wake up one morning and decide that she wanted to be a profiler, and transferred willingly.  Taking the stairs almost two at a time down into the underground, he dug his old brown leather wallet from his back pocket to scrounge for the right change.  He usually preferred to drive everywhere; he wasn’t use to taking public transit anymore. Too many people. They all seemed to stop and stare at his metal arm as though they’d never seen an amputee before. The staring always made his blood boil, to the point he just decided to get a car and deal with the parking.

“I can’t say too much about it,” Charlie confessed.  “There was a leak,” she added slowly, with a swipe of her metro pass through the reader she walked through the turn style, in disbelief she was saying anything about it at all.  “Identities were compromised, things got dangerous, and they had to pull me out. Shortly after that the director got a letter, recommending me to the BAU, from Dave. They’re always looking to expand the team’s dynamics, why not include an artist. Dave mentioned that I could offer a different perspective than the others – I read symbols and images the way Reid reads . . . well, everything, and I can translate those details into a visual.”

Her gift – that’s what Gideon called it.  The same way he could profile that the footpath killer had a stutter; Charlie could know the exact placing of a victim’s scar just by looking at a skull.  She had an eerie way of talking to the dead, and reading the living – a talent she shared with her mentor, the famous forensic artist Frank Bender, before his death in 2011.  She had been his one and only protégé, the only one he deemed worthwhile teaching because she ‘possessed the gift.’ 

Getting onto the train, they fell into easy conversation as Bucky rested his arms against the overhead bar, and Charlie took a seat in front of him.  It was a rare moment that either one of them felt truly comfortable with someone outside of their usual circle of friends.  Didn’t help that they were the only ones on the train at such a late hour, but it honestly didn’t matter, they were already off in a world all their own, they wouldn’t have noticed either way.

“I figured it out by the way,” Bucky teased, escorting her off the train.  “The answer to your riddle,” he clarified after a second.

“Oh?” Charlie turned around, giving him an amused smile that begged him to go on. Mentally she was trying to recount the last time the ride from the bar to Spence’s stop went by so quickly. She couldn’t.

“It wasn’t a yes or a no, just a not right now,” he explained feeling quite proud of himself.  Yes he could call on her, but not until after their business concluded, and it was no longer a conflict of interest.

 “Looks like you caught me,” she chuckled.

“So do you know when the right time would be for me to ask you out again?”

“I’ll give you a sign,” she promised with a laugh at the puppy dog look on his face.

“Alright,” he agreed, sliding his hands back into his pockets.  “Just do me a favour and make it obvious – subtly is lost on me in this century.”

Laughing again Charlie promised, “when the time comes, you’ll know it.”

“Thank goodness,” Bucky pretending to wipe the sweat off his brow, “cause I’d hate to miss out on a chance to go out with a girl like you cause I’m no good at picking up on clues.”  

“A girl like me?” she asked, raising a brow skeptically. Not exactly her favourite choice of words.

“Funny, smart, interesting,” Bucky shrugged.  There were a million other words he could use to describe her, sweet, talented, honest, captivating, amazing, but he figured it was just safer to keep it short than scare her off with the intensity of his developing crush.

“There are plenty of smart, funny, interesting women in the city,” she countered, turning left down a busy street.  None of that made Charlie special – there were hundreds if not thousands, or even millions of women fitting that description.  Quite frankly she didn’t see herself as being all that funny, or all that smart – certainly not when compared to Spence – and while she was interesting, it was for all the wrong reasons.

“Yeah,” he agreed hesitantly. There were plenty of women who had all the qualities he just described, and he was sure they were all wonderful people, but the one crucial factor they were missing was: they weren’t Charlie.  “But I like you,” he explained point blank.

“Why?” she scoffed. She’d seen the write up on him at the Smithsonian; well actually she heard it as Spence prattled it off verbatim, from memory. Smart, charming, chivalrous, handsome, and brave, Bucky ‘ superman’ Barnes could have his pick of women, something that was as true back then as it was now.  What made her so special?

“I dunno,” he shrugged with a cheeky, lop sided grin. “Just a feeling I have,” he added shooting her a sideways glance. “And I think you feel it too,” he added after a second. He looked over to gauge her reaction to his last statement.

Charlie said nothing, but looked back at him with a strange smile on her face, lost somewhere between a smirk, and general unwillingness to admit he was right.  Whatever there was between them, she felt it too. Though she didn’t say as much, Bucky knew it scared her. The thought that there might be someone out there willing to deal with all the crazy that was her life, someone willing to take a chance on her, to see her for who she truly was – it had her terrified. To be honest, it scared him too, but it also excited him more than anything else had in a long time.

“This is me,” she motioned up to the brownstone behind her as she faced him.  “Well Reid’s technically,” she adjusted the strap of her bag on her shoulder awkwardly looking behind her before glancing back at him. Quietly, she wondered if she should mention that he followed her home when he was only supposed to take her as far as the train station.  Whether he planned it or not, she had enjoyed his company, and felt more than a little sad that their night was coming to an end so soon.

Reluctantly she shrugged out of his jacket, grateful for its added warmth – or perhaps that was just him? She swore, the way he was looking at her right now set her blood on fire as her heart beat a little faster. “I’d invite you up for a beer, as a thank you for walking me home, but all we have is root,” she bit her lip giving him an apologetic look.

“Lucky for me, that just so happens to be my favourite kind,” Bucky grinned broadly at her as she dug out the keys from her bag. Grabbing the door for her once she got it unlocked, he followed her up the stairs, all five flights, until they reached the apartment.

“It’s not much, but it’s a safe place to lay low for a while when needed,” she explained quietly throwing the door open.  This was her sanctuary, her place to escape the media mania that plagued her stoop every time her father’s name made its way into the news. 

He was big news, which sadly meant she was as well. Charlie was the definitive source of what Lewis Rhys was really like, an inside look into the mind of a psychopath. Whoever got the exclusive scoop from her would have their journalistic career made. Naturally that meant she made it as difficult as possible for anyone to get close to her. Mercifully no one in the media knew about her close relationship with her team, or Reid, so his place was a verifiable safe haven for her to escape to when things got too crazy. If she couldn’t stay with Reid she knew Rossi or Prentiss were always willing to take her in as well. The BAU looked out for their own – she learned that lesson within the first few weeks of joining the team.

Tossing her keys onto the small table next to the door she invited James in, telling him not to bother removing his shoes – the place was a mess anyways.  The only time Reid actually cleaned was when she stayed with him. Discarding her bag onto the couch she headed straight for the fridge, grabbing them two bottles of Jones Root beer. 

“Here,” she handed one of the bottles to James. 

He took the bottle, and thanked her for the drink before following Charlie out the window. Spence lived on the top floor of his building, and had a decent view of the city from the fire escape.

“I like to come out here late at night sometimes,” she confessed, leaning against the railing. There was something about seeing the city this way, it made her feel at peace, knowing there were so many people going about their daily routines with little to no knowledge of who she was or what he father had done.  People who hadn’t seen what she saw on a daily basis, who had never seen a murdered body.  She’d like to keep it that way for as many of them as possible, and preserve their innocence.

“I can see why,” Bucky agreed taking a sip from his bottle.  “It’s a gorgeous view,” he added, not looking at the city, but at Charlie standing next to him, leaning against the railing, selfishly admiring the pensive look etched on her face.

“Can I be honest with you?” she asked quietly not taking her eyes off the skyline.

“Have you been anything less than, so far?” he wondered with a twitch of his upper lip.

“You don’t always have to wear your mask,” she whispered softly before taking a sip from her own bottle, wiping away the remnants from her lip with the sleeve of her shirt. “You’re safe around me.”

“What?” He staggered back slightly, startled by her perception.  “I’m not wearing a mask . . . I use to . . . not anymore.” He laughed awkwardly trying to play it off as just a misunderstanding.

“I’m not talking about the muzzle. The one Hydra made you wear – that was you’re second mask,” she sighed, turning to face him.  “I’m talking about your first one.  The brave face. You wear it like a mask. You don’t have to.  Not around me.”

Bucky’s grip on the glass bottle tightened until it shattered in his hand, raining glass down onto the street below. Watching foaming liquid trickle down his metal arm he kept his eyes cast downward, “how’d you figure it out?” he whispered, mentally returning to the dark place deep in his core. Not that he ever really left the darkness; he just got better at covering it up.

“Cause,” she answered, drying his hand with a tissue that seemingly appeared form nowhere.  “I’ve got one too.”  Finally his eyes drifted up and met hers.  “Morgan calls it my poker face,” she explained softly craning her neck to one side, she focused on the metal plating of his arm, fascinated by the mechanisms, and the way they seemed to fit together. It was some of the most intricate, and advanced engineering she’d ever seen, and it fascinated her.

“Doing what I do, with my father being who he is – everyone knows. You just have to say my last name, and everyone at the Bureau knows exactly who my father is, and what he did. I’ve spent my whole life in his shadow; no matter how hard I try, I never quite seem able to get out from under the darkness. 

Every time he makes the news, it’s like a wound that never closes, my world goes to hell, and the wound reopens. Suddenly, it’s happening all over again, finding out who he was, what he was doing all the times I was away. All the pain, the hurt, the anger, and the frustration bubbles up again, and the wound begins to bleed.

I tell myself it was a long time ago, I’ve grown since then, I’m fine. If you keep saying it, then eventually it’s gotta be true, right? There are times you’ve almost got yourself convinced you’re okay, but no matter how hard you try; you can never truly lie to yourself, can you?”

Glancing over her shoulder she looked to James, feeling unsteady, and unsure of herself.  The cold started seeping back into her chest, making it hard for her to breathe. Her chest heaved, as though she’d ran the marathon, as she tried to relax her heart, fighting the emotions swirling and tumbling deep inside the ones she kept buried, but always floated up like a helium balloon.

There she was.  The scared, vulnerable fifteen year old still trying to cope with the trauma of discovering who her father really was. Abandoning her bottle, still half full, on the metal grate next to her feet she held her arm tightly, as though she were holding herself together, for fear of falling apart. The girl from the bar was gone, the one with a quick remark and a cheeky smile, who didn’t let anything bother her. She’d be back, probably not tonight, but come morning she’d be back.  Right now she needed to be hurt, to be vulnerable, just not alone.  

Bucky took a deep breath, unsure how much longer he had with the girl behind the mask, but if Charlie could be brave enough to lower her mask around him, then maybe he could to the same with her. It was time to let someone in, and he knew, all the way down in his marrow, that she was someone worth taking a risk on. Exhaling slowly, he turned and slid down with his back against the metal railing.

“Steve tries,” he admitted softly. “He tries so hard to be there, and to be supportive, and I appreciate it.  Really I do.  He just doesn’t get it. He doesn’t have that darkness, lifetimes of blood on his hands.  He doesn’t know that feeling of knowing that no matter what he does, or what anyone says, there is never going to be a way for him to undo what he did, to wash that blood off.  I know it wasn’t my fault, I know what they did to me – but none of it helps. All those people. They’re still dead, and I still killed them. I’ll never be able to forgive myself for that. Never. It kills Steve to know I can’t forgive myself – so I started lying. Stupid, isn’t it? Even after all these years, I’m still trying to protect him.”

Bucky found that once he got started, it was difficult to stop talking.  “That’s why I want back into the field.  I just want to be able to move on with my life, and leave that guy in the past.  Maybe do some good in this world to make up for all the bad I did.”

“God, does that sounds familiar,” Charlie gave him a knowing smile as she slid down next to him, nudging his foot with hers.  “I was so excited to be hunting serial killers when I joined the BAU.  I thought maybe, just maybe, if I could stop the same number of monsters as lives my dad ruined, then maybe I’d get a clean slate.”

“What do you need a clean slate for?” Bucky wanted to know.  “It’s not like you killed all those women – you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she remarked harshly.  “My father was a serial killer. In the eyes of the public I’m guilty by association,” she argued bitterly. All the horrid names she’d been called over the years flashed through her mind, causing her teeth to grind against each other. Her fists shook as she clenched them tighter and tighter, grateful she didn’t have any nails to puncture the skin on her palms.

Instinctively, Bucky reached over for her hand, and calm the shaking.  Grabbing her wrist first, he wriggled his fingers into the epicentre of her vice like grip.  Gently he worked the hand, until she had unclenched and her palm rested on top of his, his thumb rubbing small, soothing circles on the back of her hand.

Charlie stared at the hand in hers, before looking over at James, and the intent way he was looking at her. Licking her lips, and swallowing the hard lump forming in her throat, she looked back to her feet, leaning into his body, only slightly.

“At first I thought thirty-six – that’s manageable, the BAU handles dozens of cases a year.  But then you factor in all the lives of those who would never be the same because of him, the friends and family of the thirty-six, and you’re left with an impossible number.” She paused and thought of herself, and how her father took her life from her too.  Just another name to add to the list. “Eventually I stopped doing the job for him.  Realized all the good I was doing meant nothing to him, or anyone else for that matter. People were going to think and say what they wanted about me no matter what I did.

You can’t do the job for them, James. People are going to see what they want to see no matter what you do to try and change that.  There are always going to be some people who will see you as a monster, and there isn’t a God damn thing you can do about it – you have to be ready for that.  To some, you will always be the Winter Soldier, fist of Hydra, just like I’m always going to be the seed of Satan, the devil’s offspring.”

Bucky bristled at her words, not at what she called him, but what she said about herself.  _Feel free to curse if you’d like to Sgt. Barnes, I assure you, you won’t hurt my feelings_.

“Don’t you ever get tired of it all?” he wondered tucking some of her hair back behind her ear that had been obscuring her face from him.  He noted that her ears were pierced, not once, but three times.  “The pretending, and the weight of that burden,” he added after a brief pause.

“It’s exhausting,” she admitted, resting her head against his shoulder, forehead pressed against the crook of his neck. “Not the sign,” she clarified when she felt his shoulder tense beneath her skin, and his breath hitch.

“Isn’t this against the rules,” he mused playfully.

“I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.”

Adjusting so he could drape his arm around her, Bucky murmured, “deal,” as he pulled her in close to his body. He noticed the tropical scent of her hair as it tickled his nose. If he had to guess he’d say it was coconut, but there was something else mixed in too. Gentle. Sweet. Taking a deep breath he let the scent fill his lungs before exhaling.  Whatever it was, he liked it; it was a soothing mixture that had a calming effect.

 

* * *

 

Sitting there, with his arm wrapped around her shoulders, her head resting against him, Charlie knew she shouldn’t be doing this. His file wasn’t closed yet. Thank Jesus, Mary and Joseph she finished, and filed, the evaluation paperwork on the plane to Indiana. Now all she had to do was pray they agreed with her findings, and didn’t request a follow up. If they did she’d have to defer the file to another agent, and no one would ever let her live it down that she got personal with a subject. They’d stop giving her evaluations, or at the very least she wouldn’t be able to conduct them unsupervised again, and she’d probably have to undergo an investigation.

The very thought made her chest constrict and palms sweat. She couldn’t have something like that on her record. She couldn’t afford a single blemish on her reputation in the bureau. Charlie spent her entire career working tirelessly to be the perfect agent, pushing herself to the brink of exhaustion to ace her tests, following orders or the rules to the letter.  She had to, unlike the others she had something to prove – that she wasn’t her father. She wasn’t going to break.

 _Overcompensating for her father’s crimes and possess an overwhelming desire to prove herself,_ that’s what Gideon had written in her file when she underwent her own psych eval after being transferred to the BAU.  He was right. She was still trying to compensate for what he father had done, and she’d do it by being the perfect agent. She never questioned it before.   

But sitting there, with James tracing small circles on her arm with the back of his thumb, had her questioning the value of a perfect record.  This was wrong.  She knew that. But it felt so good, so right, that for the first time since she joined the academy she didn’t give a damn.  She’d let the agent take a rest for the night, and just focus on being Charlie, the girl who was currently enjoying the feeling of having James’ arm around her.

“You know what the worst part is?” she asked quietly, interrupting the city’s nightly melody of traffic mixed with idle chatter of pedestrians. “Aside from the fact that he killed people.”

“What?” James’ voice, either sleepy or extremely content, rumbled deep in his chest, tightening his hold on her ever so slightly.

“I don’t know what’s real anymore.”

Bucky sat in pensive silence. The words struck a resounding chord deep inside of him.  This conversation was starting to sound so familiar.

“Scottsborough isn’t like New York,” she explained softly, brushing some of the hair from her face. “People don’t dream of making it there; they dream of making it out. Growing up, we never had a lot of money; there were a lot of lean years – a lot,” Charlie sighed as she started to reminisce. 

“I remember one Christmas, I think I was about five, dad didn’t have enough money for a tree or presents. So, he told me that year Santa was away on holidays, and his cousin George Clause was in charge of present delivery.  And George didn’t have the same kind of magic Santa did, so that year not everyone was going to get presents on the same day – cause he couldn’t do it all in one night the way Santa did.  The day after Christmas I remember he got up real early to go to the stores now that everything was on sale, and drove around until he found an old tree someone threw to the curb, and brought it back to the house.”

She smiled fondly at the memory. He still couldn’t afford much; all she got was a baseball, and a second hand catcher’s mitt. That didn’t matter though. She loved them; in her mind they were the greatest gifts in the world.

 “I’d spend hours upon hours playing with that ball and mitt,” she confessed wiping the corners of her eyes.  “No matter how bad things got, he always found a way to pay for things, team fees, uniform rentals, gymnastics, sketchbooks – he always made it work.

When I got a bit older, and I started to actually notice the money problems, I asked him why he kept spending all his money on me, there had to be stuff he wanted too.  He told me it was cause he knew I was going places, whether it was being the first female baseball player in the major leagues, or being a famous artist, but I was never gonna get anywhere just sitting at home twiddling my thumbs. He knew I dreamed of getting out, and he just wanted to give it to me in the worst way.

At the time I really thought he believed in me.  He was at every one of my games, and was always hanging my pictures around the house, and the shop – said it gave the place a sense of class. But now, now I don’t know. Did he really believe I was going somewhere, or was he just trying to keep me out of the house so I wouldn’t notice what was really going on in the barn.

Fifteen years worth of memories, and pictures of a smiling girl and her loving father – and they’re lies. Was any of it real? Were the first fifteen years of my life just a pile of lies?” she looked to Bucky as though he might have the answer. “Now I just feel like I’m constantly waiting for someone to pull the rug out from under me again.  I mean if my dad could lie to me like that for years, what’s stopping other people from doing the same?”

Bucky kept his eyes cast down, chewing furiously at the skin on his lip.  He didn’t have the faintest idea what to say that could make Charlie feel better, and he could feel it.  He felt her pain, and her confusion, and he wished he had the answers for her, that he knew what to say that could make her feel better about her father. Instead he held her even tighter against his body, hoping that the little bit of extra warmth might provide her some sense of comfort. 

“This,” he murmured softly, shaking his head as he chuckled lightly in disbelief.

“What?”

“Why you,” he whispered, answering her question from earlier, looking up, catching her eyes.  “You know.  You know what it’s like to suddenly find yourself second-guessing everything you’ve ever known, the people around you, and even yourself.” He removed his arm from around her shoulders, and reached for her hand, lacing their fingers together.  The pad of his thumb stroked one of her fingers as they bent, cradling his in the spaces between them. 

“For the record,” he cleared his throat, feeling his heart set to race again.  “I happen to like the girl behind the mask.”

Charlie looked down, smiling shyly as she squeezed his hand. “You’re the first person I’ve told, about that Christmas.  Actually, it’s the most personal thing I’ve told anyone about my dad,” she confessed.

“Not even Rossi?”

Shaking her head sadly, she met his gaze again and explained.  “Dave and the team are more there for moral support, but we don’t really talk about him outside of the case.”

“Why not?”

“It makes them uncomfortable,” she shrugged helplessly.  “The BAU is all about being objective, and talking about him outside of the case makes it personal.  They can’t see him as just another psychopath anymore, not if they start seeing his as someone with a job and a family – a real person. 

I mean, how can you take the stand as a professional witness, and say someone deserves the death penalty if you know that they spent every Saturday in the stands of their daughter’s baseball games, cheering like crazy? Or knowing that they spent hours every night, after pulling a double shift at the auto shop, and working the farm, helping her puzzle through her geometry homework? You can’t. You can’t do the job when it’s personal. It’s just not possible.”

“So you just keep all that to yourself?” Bucky wondered.  There was a lot of crap in his life, hundreds memories floating around, but he had Steve; he had someone he could share all of that with.  He couldn’t imagine what that must feel like, to have thousands of memories of someone, and not being able to share them with anyone, how isolating it must be.

Charlie looked at him, and exhaled slowly with a sad smile tugging at the corner of her lips. She didn’t say anything.  Didn’t have to. The pained expression behind her eyes spoke enough to fill volumes.

“You didn’t have to tell me any of this,” Bucky whispered, voice catching in the back of throat. She trusted him, someone she hardly knew, with something she hadn’t even told the members of her team, people she had known for years. He gulped slowly, trying to swallow the possible implications back down.

“I know,” she bobbed her head in agreement. “It just felt like I found someone I _could_ tell. Someone who, for the first time in a long time, made me feel a little less alone.”

Bucky blinked rapidly, fighting a losing battle to keep the smile off his face. “I’m glad,” he whispered as she shifted in place to look at him.  “Cause you make me feel less alone too,” he confessed tilting his head a little to the side. 

He didn’t know what it was, but there was something in the silence, calling to him. The longer he looked at her under the pale glow of the lights reflecting up from the streets the faster his heart raced in his chest.  He could feel it, whatever it was between them, every second growing stronger until his mouth turned to ash, and he found it difficult to breath. Bucky could have sworn he was drowning; only he knew he was on dry land, and the river was miles away. What’s more, he knew Charlie felt it too. Her skin felt flushed in his hand, and though no one spoke, her cheeks were a faint scarlet, something she tried to keep hidden by bowing her head forward so her hair masked her face from his sight – but he still saw it.

He felt an ache in his chest, a dull pain screaming for him to kiss her.  He wanted to in the worst way, to smooth the hair from her face, take her in the palm of his hands and kiss her.  To show her everything he felt, and been feeling from the moment he first saw her in the waiting room at Quantico, to prove to her that some things in life were still real. 

Closing his eyes, Bucky leaned his head back against the rail, and let out a shaky breath.  _Not yet,_ he reminded himself.  There would be a time for all of that, just not yet.  “So,” he started, trying to do something to ease the mounting tension between them, “you looking for anything in particular at the market?” he asked, recalling her plans for brunch and the farmer’s market tomorrow with the Garcia woman.

“It’s a stupid little habit of mine,” Charlie confessed with a tiny smile, as she drew her knees up close to her chest.  “But after we get back from a case I always buy myself some flowers.  Just a little something colourful and cheery to remind myself that there’s still some beauty in the world.”

“That’s cute,” he grinned, falling in love with the sweet simplicity of the idea.  “What kinds do you usually get?”

“Either tulips or gerbera daisies. I love them – especially the orange ones,” she confessed.  “Though I almost always end up buying both – I can never decide which I like more.”

Chuckling Bucky was about to comment when a loud buzz came vibrating from his pocket.  Slightly flushed from embarrassment he excused himself as he dug out the phone.  It was a text from Steve.

_Are you still with Charlie? Just make sure you use protection – I’m not ready to become uncle Steve._

“Steve?” Charlie giggled, getting up on to her feet.

Heaving an aggravated sigh, Bucky tucked the phone back into his pocket before getting up.  “I should probably get going,” he grumbled regretfully. “Need to go beat some respect into that little punk.”

“Not so little anymore,” Charlie laughed, reminding Bucky that he and Steve were roughly the same size now.

Crawling back through the window into the empty apartment, Charlie made her way into the kitchen to drop off her bottle in the sink. She’d have to clean up the glass from where James broke his earlier – later though.  Turning around to escort him to the door, she found Bucky looking at her strangely. “What?” she laughed as she smiled at him, cocking her head curiously to the side.

“Nothing,” Bucky shook his head as he shrugged.  “Just that, I’d really like to kiss you good night, but I won’t.  Not until I get that sign.”

Resting her hand on the doorknob Charlie smiled as she thanked him again for walking her home, letting her borrow his jacket, keeping her company, and just for the night in general.

“It was both my privilege and my pleasure,” Bucky assured her, zipping up his jacket, searching new ways to delay his departure just a little bit longer. He was about to say something else when she leaned up, gently pressing her lips against the rough stubble on his cheek.

“Still not the sign,” she whispered through her smile, leaving him wondering if she could hear his heart skip a beat just now.  She opened the door, bidding him one final good night.

 

Rounding the corner from the final flight of stairs, Spencer took a couple startled steps back when he encountered Bucky, leaving his apartment.  He looked over, and saw a giddy looking Charlie leaning against the doorframe watching the super soldier, sporting an expression that could only be described as hopelessly smittened, begin the long descent towards the first floor. Her hair was slightly mussed in the back, but the excited glow beneath her skin quickly fizzled out when she spotted Spencer standing in the hallway. Her smile fell flat, and her eyes looked up in horror.

“You’re still up?” Reid asked as he walked past an oblivious Bucky.

“Nothing happened,” she explained quickly to Spence as he walked through the front door.

“Why? What could have happened?” Reid wondered cluelessly, bewildered by Charlie’s sudden change in demeanour.

Wrapping her arms around him, she pulled Reid into a tight embrace.  “And this is why I love you,” she confessed, before locking the door behind them for the night.

 

* * *

 

Having always been an early riser, Charlie opened the door the following morning, around ten thirty, after the second knock, determined not to let it wake Spence.  She’d been up for a couple hours anyways, working on the sketches she’d said she was going to do the night before. Her unplanned, but much enjoyed, heart to heart with James left her work neglected another night. Feeling guilty, she went to bed as soon as Spence got home from the bar, and got up extra early to make some segue on the sketches.

Opening the door, she was surprised to see Garcia holding a bouquet of flowers.  Penelope was expected. The flowers were not. “What, you couldn’t wait for the market?” asked Charlie, with an amused chuckle, ushering Garcia into the small apartment.

“These were on your door step,” Garcia announced passing over the bouquet to Charlie.  “ Someone has an admirer,” she teased with a saucy grin.

Taking a look down at the flowers in her arm, Charlie realized they were orange gerbera daisies. _No_ she thought, trying to silence the screaming in her head. She knew exactly who they were from – when did he drop them off? Shouldn’t she have heard him come by?

“I need to put these in water,” Charlie announced, setting the bouquet down on the table.  She knew Spence didn’t actually own a vase so she’d have either use a pasta pot or a glass – if he had one large enough.

“Are they from who I think they’re from?” Garcia probed excitedly.

“They’re from James,” Charlie confirmed, causing Garcia to squeal in place, especially when she saw the embarrassed grin break out on Charlie’s face. She didn’t know why, but she also told Garcia it was officially the first time a man ever bought her flowers.

“Marry the boy,” she demanded immediately after squealing slightly, most likely waking Reid from his sleep.  Charlie laughed as she added quickly, “just not before Morgan and me.”

Getting the tallest pot Reid owned down from to the top cupboard Charlie flicked the tap on.  Testing the water first she began to fill the pot with temped water as Garcia continued to ramble excitedly.

“There’s a card,” Garcia pointed to a little cream envelope jutting out from the bright yellow tissue paper wrapped around them as she passed the bouquet to Charlie.

Setting the bouquet down gently on the counter she picked up the cream coloured envelope with her name written in smooth blue ink.  Pulling the card out, she flipped it over, and saw four letters that stopped her heart as it leapt into her throat.

_Real._

 

_P.S_

_Technically Steve paid for these, so I didn’t break the rules_  

 

Seeing the way she clapped one hand over her mouth, attempting to hide the giant grin on her face, as the card trembled slightly in the other, Garcia had to see what was written that sent Charlie into such a state.  “I don’t get it,” she said, reading the card over her shoulder. “What exactly happened last night?”

Quickly snipping away at the plastic and elastics around the stems keeping them bound together, Charlie set the flowers in the pot – mentally adding ‘vase’ to the list of things to keep an eye out for at the market. “We can walk and talk,” she informed Penelope, quickly grabbing her bag and keys by the door. She didn’t want Reid over hearing anything about last night – he believed nothing happened, and she didn’t want him thinking otherwise. 

Looking back at the flowers sitting in the pot on the kitchen counter, smiling back at her, as she ushered the confused Penelope out the door, Charlie smiled.  She agreed.  _Real._ _  
_


End file.
